NEW YORK—March typically brings snow and plenty of maple syrup for the syrup producers around the state, as well as droves of visitors for Maple Weekend.
Maple Weekend is actually two weekends, this weekend and last weekend. In New York, a state, which produces about 20 percent of all the maple syrup in the United States—564,000 gallons—producers welcome hundreds of visitors to their land to see tree sap become maple syrup.
However, unusually warm weather this year has shifted the two-month tree-tapping season that generally starts in February or March to January through March.
“My husband and I have been doing this for 30 years and we’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jane Yancey, co-owner of Yancey’s Sugarbush, a dairy farm in Croghan, about six hours north of New York City. “Often we would not have made any syrup yet.
We very seldom make syrup before the 17th of March, and that’s an early year. This is extremely unusual.”
As Yancey was speaking, the last of this year’s sap, just extracted from the trees, was being boiled into syrup in the evaporator. Ideally, sap shouldn’t sit in the evaporator for more than a day.
Visitors this weekend may enjoy a horse-pulled wagon. The Yanceys are mulling over other activities.
